


Life Is Like A...

by Frea_O



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-15
Updated: 2013-02-15
Packaged: 2017-11-29 08:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/684667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If there was one thing Natasha did not expect, it was a naked Clint Barton sitting on her bed, a heart-shaped box of chocolates covering his crotch.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life Is Like A...

**Author's Note:**

  * For [distelhawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/distelhawk/gifts).



> Written for the [be-compromised](http://be-compromised.livejournal.com) Valentine’s Day Mini-Promptathon!

She knew she’d had a long shift and an even longer session with Dr. Markham, but Natasha had never been prone to hallucinations, even when exhausted. So she figured when she walked into her quarters and there was Clint Barton, Hawkeye himself, sitting on her bed, it was probably reality. What didn’t seem real was the fact that he didn’t seem to be wearing anything but a box of chocolates that was more or less tastefully covering his crotch.

She stopped with the door still open. “Barton?”

Barton went tense all over—which she could tell because she could literally see almost _all_ of him. “Romanoff?” he asked, giving her a quizzical look. “What are you doing in Ramirez’s quarters?”

“I’m not in Ramirez’s quarters. I’m in my quarters.”

“No, you’re not, you’re—crap!” Barton flushed (once again, all over) and immediately scrambled backward. She should probably have been flattered by her ability to cause abject panic and fear in another individual, given the way Barton was swearing up a storm, but Natasha simply quietly closed the door behind her while Barton scurried for the first way to protect his modesty that he could find.

Natasha saw it coming a second too late. Again, she’d blame the lapse on the distraction of having a naked Hawkeye in her bed. “No,” she said, lunging forward. “Quit rubbing your bare ass all over my sheets, Barton! Dammit.”

“Sorry—sorry—” He was already wrapping himself in a sheet. 

She sighed. “I just washed those.”

“I will pay to have them dry-cleaned, I promise—I’m sorry, I thought this was Ramirez’s place.” Her sometimes-partner hopped back in clear embarrassment, sheet bundled about his torso and a mortified expression in place. “I was sure this was Ramirez’s room. No, this has to be Ramirez’s room.”

“We switched last week.”

Barton pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and his forefinger. “So Ramirez is…”

“Down the hall and to the left.” Natasha gave him an amused once-over. He looked almost pitiful standing there, wrapped up in the standard-issue SHIELD bed sheets. “You can borrow the sheet if you want to go find her.”

“I’m good, thanks.”

Silence fell. And it was Awkward. Natasha had dealt with awkward before, but not very much; the Red Room had trained her how to maneuver through any situation with ease and aplomb, but somehow, even all of that training failed against naked, embarrassed Clint Barton. She cleared her throat. “Ahem.”

“Oh, right. I should probably—find my…clothes—turn around, will you?” Barton gave her an exasperated look.

“I’ve seen naked men before, Barton,” Natasha said.

“Yeah, but you haven’t seen naked me before—”

“Close enough.”

“—and I’d like to avoid sexual harassment seminars where I can. With the way you’re Fury’s project, he’d probably deliver the lecture himself.” 

Natasha thought about it for a second. Even though it had been Barton’s call to bring her in—for which she owed him a debt she couldn’t quite put into words—Fury _had_ taken an interest in her from the start of her career at SHIELD. Perhaps he just enjoyed herding chaos, but it didn’t matter: Clint had a point. So she rolled her eyes at him and turned around, marveling at the same time that she would never have willingly turned her back on anybody even six months before. She heard his relieved oath and then scrambling as he no doubt rushed to gather all of his clothes. 

“Okay, it’s safe now,” he said. When she turned, he was hopping on one socked foot, pulling his boot on. “Tasha, I am so, so sorry. I really did think this was Ramirez’s room.”

She’d had no idea Ramirez and Barton were a thing, but apparently her partner’s standards were lower than she thought. “And I’m guessing she likes drugstore chocolates?” she asked, unable to keep the disdain from her voice as she nudged the box of chocolates with her toe.

Barton laughed. “Not everybody’s a chocolate snob like you, Nat.” He began gathering the sheets he’d mussed.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking your sheets to the laundry. It’s the least I can do.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

Natasha sighed. She didn’t have any back-up sheets, which meant she wouldn’t be able to sleep until the washer and dryer were done. The night, which she’d been hoping would end soon, suddenly stretched out in front of her, even longer. 

“Nat.” Barton picked up the bundled sheets, his voice so serious that she instinctively looked at him. “I’m trying to apologize here.”

“For what? It was just a mistake.”

“Either way.” Clint shouldered past her, sheets tucked under his arm. She sighed and turned to follow him; if he was going to be stuck in SHIELD’s all-night Laundromat, the least she could do was keep him company. But when he pushed open the door and halted abruptly, she nearly crashed into him. Had she been anybody but the Black Widow, she would have. Instead, she stepped smoothly to the side, and had a front-row seat to see the look on Gail Ramirez’s face, as the other agent had clearly been passing through the hallway outside her quarters.

_Uh-oh._

Ramirez took it all in: Clint’s obviously sloppy clothes from his hurried dressing, the tangle of bed sheets under his arm, the redhead right behind him. She glared first at Clint and then at Natasha for one poisonous, hateful second. Natasha raised an eyebrow. Ramirez turned on her heel and headed off.

“Ramirez, wait!” Clint called, but the other agent’s stride never faltered. Clint looked torn for a second and even took a couple of steps out, but he stopped and his shoulders sagged. “There’s absolutely no way to explain this that she’ll believe me, is there?”

Natasha, about to say that she would never have believed him either, considered for a second. She clapped her partner on the shoulder. “Maybe she just needs to cool off?”

“I get the feeling there’s going to be a silhouette on the range tomorrow with my name on it. And all of the shots will be grouped around the groin.”

“Nah, Ramirez is a terrible shot, the grouping won’t be that precise. C’mon, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee while the sheets wash. Least I could do, since I seem to have cost you a girlfriend.” Natasha locked the door to her quarters and headed to the all-night Laundromat and café that agents used. Given that it was Valentine’s Day, the place was deserted; most of the SHIELD agents probably had sweethearts they were seeing. Agents liked to joke that the coffee was SHIELD’s best way of killing somebody dead in under thirty seconds, but Clint actually seemed to like it, so Natasha brought a couple of cups back to the Laundromat and together, they watched her sheets tumble in the washing machine in silence.

“So,” Natasha finally said, “does that trick actually work?”

“What trick?” Clint asked.

“Showing up in a woman’s bed with nothing but chocolates on your crotch.”

Clint winced and looked around, but thankfully nobody else had come in. “So far, no. But I’ve only done it the once.”

“Wouldn’t rose petals be better?” Natasha asked.

“Seemed cliché.”

Natasha stretched and took a sip of the sewage SHIELD liked to call coffee. “Yeah, but you’re not wasting good chocolates.”

Clint raised an eyebrow at her.

She waved a hand. “Even I’ll give drugstore chocolates a chance, Barton. I’m not all designer brands and Godiva like some spoiled princess.”

“Hey, the chocolates were in a box. They’re still edible.” 

Natasha gave him a look.

“Okay,” Clint said, sighing. “Maybe not. So you’re saying next time I show up naked in a woman’s bed, use something non-edible?”

“I love that you’re trying to make this a habit.”

“Keep trying ’til you succeed, Romanoff.”

The laughter that bubbled out of her surprised her—and Clint, too, judging by the way he jumped. She clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle some of the giggles. Clint, however, met her eye and started chuckling, until they were both bent over double, laughing, tears streaming from their eyes.

“Oh, God,” Natasha said, dashing at the tears. “The look on your _face_ , Barton, when I walked in!”

“The look on _my_ face? You should’ve seen _your_ face!”

“I felt like the Grim Reaper, you moved so fast!”

“I’m just glad you didn’t shoot me.”

“Me, too.” Natasha wiped at her eyes again. “Shooting my partner for showing up in my bed—”

“Wearing only a box of chocolates.”

“—would really just cement me as the Black Widow in _everybody’s_ minds.”

“And unlike Ramirez, your aim is perfect.” Clint chuckled once more and stretched out, now completely relaxed. He leaned his head against the chair-back so that he could look up at the ceiling. For a few moments, the gentle whir of the washing machine was the only noise. “Not how I pictured spending Valentine’s Day,” he said. “But I’m not complaining.”

Natasha thought about it. “Me either.”

Clint pulled out a deck of cards and Natasha taught him a few Russian card games while the washers and dryers rumbled all around them. In return, Clint showed her how to fling the cards just so that they could stick out of the walls by the corner. She soon forgot all about her exhaustion and instead, for the first time ever, fully relaxed around her partner. Once the sheets were dry, she bade him good night and took the sheets back to her room alone, ignoring Clint’s protests that he should at least help make the bed, given that all of this was his fault. The last thing she heard as she left the Laundromat was Clint’s laughter at the number of cards stuck to the walls.

The next morning, there was a cheap box of drugstore chocolates in her mailbox at the barracks, this time without a naked Hawkeye under them. For most SHIELD agents, it was the first time they ever saw the Black Widow smile.


End file.
